Thursday, October 15, 2009

There is simply not enough time to report fully on the all the stories that catch our eye and float by our desks. However, we do manage to comment on a fair amount of those stories in our microblogging presence on Twitter. (Don’t let anyone steer you wrong: it’s a lot easier and faster to write a 140 character story than a real one.)

Here, then, are some of the things we’ve reported on Twitter over the last few days:

Awards, awards and then some awards: The shortlists for both the National Book Awards and the Governor Generals Awards were announced yesterday. Some surprises on both lists. And what does it all mean? Big book party time is approaching fast and furious.

The 10 Coolest Bookstores in the United States. (I’d love to see someone do lists like this for Canada, the U.K. and Australia. Any takers?) The U.S. list is here.

Here’s something not intended for your Kindle: The fur-covered edition of Dave Egger’s The Wild Things (McSweeney’s Books). The movie tie-in edition is based loosely on the book by Maurice Sendak and the screenplay co-written with Spike Jonze.

Though it’s yet another round-up of “links around the Web,” we could not resist this title: “Bookmarks: Terminatrix Palin, Wild Things art, and the interactive Proust questionnaire.” Quill & Quire wins our come-on-title-of-the-week award. (Did you even know we had such a thing? Me neither.)

Kinda Boing Boing related, but not really: the delicious Cory Doctorow blows his top. “The author, activist and co-editor of the influential Boing-Boing blog,” said the Bookseller, “urged TOC delegates to ‘restore ownership to books’ and blasted publishers and rightsholders who continue to apply DRM to their content.” Go, Cory!